(Last updated: 15.06.08)

The sixteenth person to include within this section is Bill Blackwell

PERSON No. 16: Bill Blackwell (Wireless Op / Air Gunner)

The following information was supplied in May 2008 by Bryan Yates who is a researcher of RAF Flying Fortresses, his computer hard drive crashed some years ago which unfortunately meant he lost the contact details of the supplier of Bill Blackwell's story. After reading the extract I felt it was closely linked to 206 Squadron and the other people mentioned on the site, and so I've published the information below. I'd be very interested to hear from anyone that has links to Bill and it would be great to add some photographs of him in this section. Here's the extract that Bryan sent over...

Bill Blackwell started his RAF career with number 407 squadron flying Hudson's, later moving to number 280 squadron, this time flying in Anson's on Air Sea Rescue duties. In February 1943, Bill was posted to number 206 squadron at Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides, were he flew the B-17E or Fortress 11.

Here, as an air gunner, he encountered the ball turret for the first time. Bill remembers it well, he says. 'It was a frightening experience on your first encounter, I remember my first trip in a Fortress ball turret. We all did a two hour stint at each station, you sat like a baby in your mothers womb, and the controls were not as stable as the other turrets. You could soon find yourself upside down, and if you rotated to fast you could spin round. I think we were all glad when they became obsolete in the RAF Fortresses.'

Of the other turrets Bill recalls, 'The mid-upper was a very good turret, well armed with .50s and easy to control. The tail position was also very acceptable, you had to crawl in on your hands and knees to enter, then you knelt with your bottom on a bicycle seat'. He remembers one trip flown in bad weather particularly, 'we were on patrol and the cloud base was down to 500 feet, we obviously had to fly below that to see where we were going. The cross wind was blowing the tail with such ferocity, that I was continually thrown from side to side, banging my head on each side of the fuselage. I could do little about the situation and had to suffer it, quite a painful experience'.

He arrived as a replacement crew member, so had no regular crew at first, so his first trip was as a spare bod with F/Lt Roxburgh and his crew. They took off from Benbecula at 08:05 hours on the 20th of March 1943 in F-Freddie on a convoy patrol, the rendezvous with the convoy was in mid-Atlantic and the patrol lasted for ten and a quarter hours.

Bill again flew with this crew on the 25th of March, leaving the windswept base of Benbecula at 04:45 hours and heading out into the Atlantic. Where they were to sink U-469, commanded by Oberleutnant Emil Claussen off the south east of Iceland. The same aircraft FK195 'L' with a different crew would sink yet another U-Boat a short time later, this Fortress destroyed three U-Boats in all.

Bill was to fly one more sortie with this crew before they finished their tour, that was on the 30th on a anti-submarine sweep. He did not get on to well with this senior crew, often an established crew did not like a 'Sprog' member near the end of their tour as this was considered unlucky.

However, he was soon remustered into a new all NCO crew, Sgt Gullen the pilot, was a large man six feet five inches tall, and very likable as were the rest of the crew. They got on well together on and off the ground, and they were to stay together as a crew from April 1943 to February 1944, when Bill finished his tour. The new crew spent most of April in training, flying navigation trips and decent through cloud exercises. Then finally they began operational life, as a Coastal Command crew. On a typical sortie the crew would be woken at some ungodly hour by a not to sympathetic NCO, they would then have the RAF standard pre-flight meal of bacon and eggs, not an ideal choice if the stomach was not up to par.

Then the briefing would take place, the convoy number the number of ships in the convoy, and details of the escorting vessels. After this the radio operator would be given the codes for the day, and the navigator would collect all the necessary charts for the patrol. Bill always carried a black box with him when he flew in case he ever got shot down, in it were boiled sweets, maps, Varey cartridges and a pen and paper. Two pigeons were also carried on the aircraft in special containers, but they were never used to Bills knowledge.

Their first operational sortie was on the 27th of April 1943 in Fortress A-Apple, it was a anti-submarine sortie using the Creeping Line Ahead (CLA) search pattern, and the next four months were to be spent on similar operations. One patrol was in search of a damaged U-Boat, but they did not make contact with it, they also took part in the search for a missing Sunderland without success, the longest patrol undertook by the crew was 11 hours 50 minutes.

Then on the 5th of October 1943, the crew boarded their Fortress 'Z' and took off at 09:45 hours leaving the inhospitable Benbecula airfield and headed for Thorney Island where they arrived at 14:30 hours, this was to be the first stage of their trip to Lagon in the Azores.

They did not leave Thorney Island until the 20th on the next stage of their journey this time flying H-Harry, they lifted off at 13:35 hours in transit for St. Morgan. On the 23rd of October they took off again, this time on the last leg of the flight, heading for Terciere in the Azores. They were the second aircraft to land on the new and unfinished airfield, and soon appreciated the mild climate after their sojourn in the Outer Hebrides. With no blackout and the town bars open all day, they also came to appreciate the neutral status of the island.

On the 13th of December they took off at 09:00 hours in H-Harry on an anti-shipping sweep, they were searching for a surface raider disguised as a neutral freighter. On one occasion they thought that they had found it, but it turned out to be a simple mix up in translation while talking to the crew of a genuinely neutral vessel. They were also down to fly on Christmas Day, the 25th of December was just another day in Coastal Command. They were to fly a patrol to the Bay of Biscay, in search of some German destroyers trying to make for the port of Brest. The only vessel sighted that day was HMS. Sheffield which they photographed, as it was also looking for the German raiders.

The photos were sent to the crew of the ship at a later date, on return to Lagon the crew were to discover that they had missed their Christmas dinner. When they inquired at the field kitchen as to the whereabouts of their Christmas fare, they were informed that all the dinners had gone and that they would have to be happy with steak and kidney pie.

The Fortresses were usually fitted with a Bendix type crystal controlled wireless set, it was very easy to use and all the crew took turns logging the specifically timed signals. The radio operator would also have to listen out for instructions such as call signs etc... Bill remembers the Fortress Radar sets well, 'the Radar was quite updated from my last squadron, it was the full scan type with a 360 degree rotation and with a range of 100 miles. The effective range for picking up a U-Boat was about 10 miles, but it was possible to extend this to 25 miles in some conditions'.

On the 31st of January 1944, Sgt Bill Blackwell was posted to Aldergrove, Northern Ireland having completed his tour, and that is were his contact with the Fortress ceased.